Sounds of Change

How song writers became an antennae for the human race

In his introduction to Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan wrote, "The power of the arts to anticipate future social and technological developments, by a generation and more, has long been recognized.” He channeled Ezra Pound, who called artists “the antennae of the human race.” Artists have the perceptual genius to visualize generational change more than mere mortals.

It’s not surprising then that Mark Stahlman references Bob Dylan, Buffalo Springfield, and Soul II Soul alongside Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas in this lecture. It was a first for Trivium University, his spin-out from The Center for the Study of Digital Life. Its purpose centers around a question of importance: What does it mean to be human when robots erode critical thinking and emotional capacities?

Robots decide what we read, programs we watch, stocks we trade, who we date, and what we believe. Next-generation innovations will program humans and DJ our emotions to an unprecedented, God-like degree. A go-to Stahlman reference is Buffalo Springfield's line, "Something is happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear." For a better sense of what tech-driven emotional regulation means, we need the artists.

Musicians have always been scene-makers, subculture shapers, and mirrors of the moment. They can also be prediction machines—a powerful radar for potential, seemingly unthinkable scenarios. Samples that follow prove Pound was right—artists are antennae. The most prescient anticipate alternative mainstream realities for as much as forty years. Consider these cases on previously unconsidered territories:

Changing of the Guard

1982: New World Man. Rush. About new blood displacing the old—a foreshadowing of hustle culture, self-optimation, and human as media mind. This modern man is a pioneer, a transitional being, living between a new world and the old. Neil Peart wrote in 1982, “He knows constant change is here today.” This man accepts it and capitalizes on it.

Relationships with Robots

1982: She Blinded Me With Science. Thomas Dolby. A 1982 top ten hit, British scientist and TV presenter Magnus Pyke repeatedly interjects "Science!" while engaging his robotic desire, Miss Sakamoto. Synth sounds and lyrical innuendo (she hit me with technology) suggest android love was on the horizon.

Workplace Security

1984: Time the Avenger. The Pretenders. A red flag for the titans of industry, time will expose office indiscretions kept behind closed doors. The rocking warning foretells growing power for women and the curb of abuse in the workplace. On the latter, it’s as if Chrissie Hyne put the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, and Charlie Rose on notice. Tick, tick, tick.

Cultural Unease

1984: Nobody Told Me. John Lennon. The opening line reflected —and predicted — the banality of constant conversation and inert inaction. The opening line, "Everybody's talking, No one says a word," is an ode to today's post-pandemic malaise. According to Lennon, the world had lost its course or coherent direction. "Strange Days Indeed."

Information Overload

1987: It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine). REM. A story, if you can call it that, about how desensitization to global threats. The lyrics, mirroring visual media assaults, are shotgun quick and ‘abstractly nonlinear.’ The subtext is the coming of the restless mind. In Michael Stipe’s case, "The words came from everywhere. I'm extremely aware of everything around me, whether I am sleeping, awake, dream state, or just in day-to-day life.”

Media Distortion

1989: Channel Z. The B52’s. About a fictional radio station that is "all static, all day." For the band, it was a rare cultural critique. That mass media glosses over important issues by blanketing consciousness with distraction. It was written thirty years before political wars and computational propaganda that created all static, all the time.

Fake News

1990: Way Down Now.World Party. Another alt-jam foreshadowed fallout from fake news and media fear-mongering. Karl Wallinger’s chorus howls, “Won’t you show me…something true today? Anything but this.” With media trust at an all-time low, this take gave the early read.

Social Uprisings

1995: Talkin' About a Revolution. Tracy Chapman. A go-to anthem of change still today, this song preceded Arab spring, LBGTQ, #metoo, and BLM movements. She predicted the unheard, held-down “Were gonna rise up and take their share, take what's theirs."

The Downside of Digital Life

1996: Virtual Insanity. Jamiroquai. Before the dot-com bubble, he warned of dangers due to digital immersion and disconnect from the real world. "Twisting technologies” were set to take inner lives into turmoil, absent contemplation.

The ‘Great Resignation.”

1997: Paranoid Android. Radiohead. The song is an ode to Marvin from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy— a depressed robot. To him, infinite possibilities were wasted on repetitive, trivial activities.  A young boy with new sensibilities is suffocated by the alienating world around him.

Distortion of Time

1998: Ray of Light. Madonna. About bearings and meaning as the speed of life overwhelms us. The response: A renewed interest in spirituality and faith. She said about the song, "I started studying the Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical interpretation of the Old Testament. I also became very interested in Hinduism and yoga, and for the first time in a long time, I could step outside myself and see the world from a different perspective."

Gaming Attention

2006: Crazy. Gnarls Barkley. An exploration of mechanisms of celebrity and attention in a media-saturated world. Said Danger Mouse: "I somehow got off on this tangent about how people won't take an artist seriously unless they're insane…So we started jokingly discussing ways in which we could make people think we were crazy…CeeLo took that conversation and made it into 'Crazy,’ which we recorded in one take." You fill in the blanks on how powerful his insight has become.

Information Disorders

2010: Afraid Of Everyone. The National. Matt Berninger writes about the silent desperation of overcoming imagined fear. He asks, “How do you defend yourself and your family from the chaotic forces of evil if you don't even know what they are, who's right or wrong, and what to believe?" It's the existential question of digital life.

Prismatic Identity

2017: Do I Have to Talk You Into It? Spoon. The video presents Spoon's lead singer getting photoshopped to oblivion. The video’s production edit is a grade-A demo of potential damages done by obsessive image (and identity) editing. Worth watching.

Digital Conveniences

2018: Walk the Walk. Gaz Coombes. A lament on futures built through anxiety-inducing novelty and convenience ("They got driverless cars in Florida and drones to your door"). His future vision of robotic automation ("A slingshot aiming at your heart") is a reminder to pay close attention to AI and robotic aspirations.

These songs pointed to a life shaped by Web 2.0 development. Is a similar artistic movement in the works about robotic, ultra-convenient, deeply personal futures? Or, like the final reference below that uses AI to bring back the dead? The ‘Triv U’ team is compiling a song inventory for further study. If you have additions, drop a line in the comments. Will post the playlist back in the exchange once it's fully populated. Thanks for tuning in.